Thursday, June 25, 2009

Although he is not a prince, Bernardo did grow up in a castle. And now, at the age of almost 80, he lives there still. For more than 500 years his family has inhabited this land, managed its fields, produced wine and olive oil here in the Tuscan hills. The castle itself is called Calcione, and its history is even longer than that of Bernardo's family; it was in the 900s that someone built the first part of Calcione, and in the centuries that followed the castle was expanded and other houses were built. One of those other houses was the farmhouse called San Giuseppe where I stayed for a short time with friends.

Bernardo loves to show us around the castle. Have you ever been with a small boy who wants you to see his treasures? You know how he will take you in his room? Show you his favorite toy car, a rock he found? Bernardo is that boy. But what a room he has, and what toys… “There are more than 100 rooms here,” he tells us, “The hallways upstairs are like a big square. We would run and ride our bicycles in them.” “Come! Follow me!” he yells, and he’s gone into a hallway…“Look here! These are my family!” He points at old oil paintings in large gilt frames that line a wall. These family members of his lived centuries ago, and yet he knows them by name; he tells us stories about them. Then abruptly he again turns and disappears. “Follow me! Let’s go outside now!”

Now we are at the front of the castle. There are the two large doors of wood; high, heavy, massive doors that every castle deserves. If they were opened Cinderella and all her coach and horses would be entering, I know this with certainty. We pass, not through them, but through a small, man-sized door that is hinged into one of the large doors. We’re in the courtyard. There is castle all around. The ground is dirt. There is a cart here, a barrel there. For a moment I forgot what century we are in. Here, I don’t think it matters. Bernardo speaks about parties they have here. I can imagine the tables, the lights. I can almost hear the music, but it is interrupted when I again hear, “Come! Follow me this way!” He disappears through a small door in the side wall. We follow.

It’s a chapel. Tiny. Silent. Maybe six rows of pews. There are frescoes everywhere on the walls and ceiling. Bernardo says, “Look at our relic.” We look at the glass case to which he is pointing. Inside is the skeleton of a 14-year-old boy, martyred more than 600 years ago. The skeleton has been encased in a wax figure of a boy sleeping, dressed in robes of his era. One wax foot is broken, and you can see the bones inside. Incredible…

I want to stay in the chapel a bit more, but Bernardo already has another plan. Another hallway, along what I think is another side of the castle. An arched door. It’s necessary to use a lock to open this one. A small room, with one small window. The window is locked tightly and covered with another layer of glass. A large dark wooden table dominates the center of the room. Bookshelves line three walls, and all the shelves are filled with binders, files, papers. The shelves are orderly and neat, the table, conversely, is strewn with papers. “It’s the archive for the castle,” explains Bernardo. They must be preserved in this way, in this hermetically sealed, humidity controlled room. If you wanted to see what was spent on food during a month in 1694, it’s in here. “Ah!” he says. He’s found the thing he’s been rummaging for on the table. "Look! Look at this," he exclaims. "You will find this interesting maybe." The parchment found by Bernardo passes hand to hand around the table while he speaks. "Look closely at the signature at the bottom. You see that it is the signature of Lorenzo di Medici, and it is saying that he gave to my family another piece of land then."

Bernardo, eighty years old, looked again like that small boy with his favorite toy. He was practically jumping. I, well, I was astounded by these treasures in his toy box. His toys belong in a museum. And living here in his museum, he, I think, will feel young always. Maybe it's easy to stay eternally young when your home is 1000 years old, and your family is 500. Maybe in this atmosphere ancient and wonderful one can feel always like a child.

Monday, May 25, 2009

I first wrote about these ladies on my Stresa Sights blog, immediately after having had the pleasure of lunching next to them on a warm afternoon in March 2009. Here, I've reworded things a bit and translated the story into Italian.

My Italian teacher always says that one day, all of a sudden, we students will just 'get it'. What he means is that, after studying for years grammar and congiuntivi, reflessive verbs, the passato, and the trapassato; after practicing writing sentences, and having tried to speak a little of this and that, suddenly, like a flash out of the blue, all will be clear.

I had just this sensation recently in Italy, on a beautiful day while I was having lunch at Ristorante La Fontana in Verbania. I was alone, eating a pizza and taking a bit of sun. At the table nearest to me there were three ladies, a bit advanced in years, but very young in spirit. I'll ask you to forgive me now for having listened secretly to their conversation, but I couldn't believe my ears; for I was understanding a good amount of what they were saying. They were chatting away cheerfully while drinking their cappuccinos, when the cell phone of the woman closest to me rang.

"Ciao, Amore...", she answered, in a sing-song voice.

"Ciao, Amore...", her friends, in unison, mimic her, giggling.

Then she added, in Italian of course, but I translate for you, "No, Amore, you clean the house today. I don't want to come home now, I'm at the bar with my friends!"

This sends the other two into fits of laughter. They could be 10-year-old schoolgirls; I bet they had been 10-year-old schoolgirls together, once. Finally, the housecleaning plans are organized. The unlucky husband at home is given much to do. Which rooms need what works, what needs to be cooked. The friends interrupt often with suggestions. Finally, the woman ends the conversation as she began, sing-songing, "Ciao, ciao Amore, a dopo...", and her friends again chime in, so that he can hear them, "Ciaooooo Amoreeee... a dopooooo."

Oh, how cute they were! And how cool for me, that I got it! I was wanting to say to the ladies, "Scusatemi signore, per essere maleducata e per aver origliato. I'm sorry ladies, for having been rude and for having eavesdropped." However, I was content, after all, this was one of the first conversations that I had understood completely and clearly. It was a pleasure for me to understand their words. But also a pleasure to observe their friendship, their affection, and their complicity. Those things don't ever have any need of translation.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Dana's Note: This was written in April, 2007, during a visit to Lago Maggiore in early spring. Tomorrow I am leaving for another visit there. And so it seemed an appropriate time to post this old story. Reading it again, two years after having written it, I'd have to say I still feel much the same way about Italy now as I did then, even more so. It's like, at that time I learned to see the possibilities, but dimly, and now, I see it all with a much sharper clarity than before... Yep, I think it'll always be spring there for me...

Primavera.Spring.Rebirth. A chance to begin again. Everything is new, everything is possible.Symbolically and literally, spring is youth, promise, and opportunity. Italy is my spring.It has come to symbolize that possibilities other than those I have always accepted are available to me, and, like the blossoms opening now on the trees, that I too can begin myself again.

Perhaps that is why, on the first day of April, I am noticing all around me the evidence of this rebirth.I am in the Giardino Botanico Alpinia, high above Lago Maggiore.There is a stone path that meanders through the garden, and flower beds along the sides.In each flower bed there is a small sign with the name of the plant growing there.In most beds there is nothing to see, or only the smallest indication of a plant, perhaps only the smallest tip of green pushing its way up through the soil.But the little signs, that say Dianthus Barbatus, Erysium Cheiri, etc., these are promises, a guarantee, that the plant will in fact arrive again someday. They will begin again, another season for them...

In the mornings, I wake when it is still dark out.In the blackness I can hear the song of a bird.Soon, others join him.As the sun rises and becomes more brilliant their song grows more strong.I recognize the sounds as spring sounds, sounds of work and excitement and happiness, because they have much work to do, they know that the nests they are making will soon be occupied with new lives...

Later, I am in a cantiere in Stresa. A man named Marco is working hard to prepare his boats for spring.It doesn't matter what damages or injuries they have suffered, by the summer they will be as new. I sit on a nearby table and observe him silently.He is, in this moment, working on a 1959 Riva Ariston.The wooden hull is like half of a walnut shell right now, upside down on the floor, creating a little hiding space underneath.It has been sanded down and now has once more the appearance of new wood.There are some holes in the hull where eventually metal fastenings will be connected.The currently hollow inside will soon have three rows of cushioned turquoise seats.The dashboard will be filled with gleaming brass dials and instruments.There will be a metal steering wheel, and in just a few months the Riva will be cruising along on the lake, someone's hands on that wheel, with all the energy and enthusiasm of a young boy.A new life for the Riva.

And so it goes.I walk along the lake and I ponder what all this means to me. It's true that Italy feels like spring to me, it rejuvenates me. And it comes to me, I think, that the secret is to always be a little bit like spring.Always be renewing, both inside and out, always begin new projects, thinking always ahead, never behind, with optimism and hope, welcoming every new possibility and promise, as does spring. And if I should forget this time to time, I'll simply return to Italy, to remind me of it again...

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Author's Note: I've been doing a lot of research recently for my travel blog, Stresa Sights. It is focused, fairly obviously, on the city of Stresa, located on Lago Maggiore in Northern Italy. The following story came out of that research.____________________________________________________________________________________________

Millions of years ago, two glaciers traveled slowly over a fluvial valley, moving through the areas we callMt.Rosa and the Saint GotthardPass.On the earth they left many scars, one of them being the lake now known as Lago Maggiore.Shortly afterwards, the River Cree began taking the same path, traveling downward in an eastward direction, from the mountains left by those glaciers, through the valley, all the way until it emptied itself into the lake.

Thousands of years passed.The Romans built a road nearby the river, but they didn’t stop on their way north. Later, the first known settlers made their encampment near the old Roman road, in that spot where the River Cree and the lake meet.There was only a narrow strip of land then. They called the place Strixia. They built a fishing village there.Land was filled in, connecting the little strip with the area behind it, and the name by 998 evolved into Stresa.

Life continues almost unbroken for centuries.Stresa earns the right to call itself a village in the 14th century. Weekly markets are held along the Cree. The town has grown bigger; people live on both sides of the river now. To the left of the river the Visconti family rules everything, and to the right the Borromeans do. There were 22 families on the Visconti side of the river.In 1659 they were sold to the Borromeans for 600 lire. The town was then united under Borromean rule.

Time passes. Laundry is brought to both banks of the River Cree to be washed. Early photographs document this. Fish are caught.In 1806 the Simplon pass is opened, bringing more people to Stresa.In 1826 the first steam ferry on the lake takes one day to travel its length.The rich and famous began to visit.

I

n 1910 work begins to cover over the River Cree, truly uniting the town not only figurativeely but also literally.The street which runs over the river is called Via Roma.A railway is constructed, running the length of the new Via Roma from Stresa up to the top of Mt.Mottorone, carrying sightseers and skiers.Where the river once met the lake a casino and spa were built.The spa was closed after WWII, and the railroad in 1963.

Via Roma today is a somewhat anonymous and nondescript street, lined with pizza restaurants, cappuccino bars, and rental agencies.But the River Cree still runs underneath it.The city of Stresa holds a friendly soccer match each year between the ‘Borromeans’ and the ‘Viscontis’, with each team holding their family flags high. Tables fill the piazza Cadorna where Via Roma meets Via P. Tomaso.I can sit at a table and look up the street to Mt.Mottarone and see the path the river once took down, the path the train once took up.And I can look towards the lake, where the River Cree, hidden now below my feet, still flows into Lago Maggiore, as it has done for millions of years.

The photo above is of women washing their linens in the River Cree in the early 1800s.

The photo below is Piazza Cadorna, at the end of via Roma, under which still flows the River Cree.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Author's note: This story was written one year ago, after the new year 2008. At that time I was, as it recounts, reflecting on how far I had come since I began to study Italian in 2004. I've chosen to put it here now, on the dawn of this new year, to remind me of my progress, and to keep me moving ahead in 2009. Best wishes for a buon anno a tutti, and may 2009 bring you all that you desire._________________________________________

"Questa sera, vedremo come due cose molto simplici, come l'uva ed il sole, possono diventare un'altra cosa straordinaria, come il vino."“This evening, we will see how two things very simple, grapes and the sun, can become another thing very extraordinary.”

That was how I began the speech I recently gave to my Italian class about wine.Although just a class assignment, to me the presentation was much more, it really brought home just how far I had come.Four years had passed since I was sitting in a restaurant in Siena, drinking red table wine with friends from my tour group.I misunderstood the word tavola on the label, thinking that it was a region in Italy, announced that the wine was from Tavola, and this simple mistake, which they all laughed at, was for me the beginning of a journey to learn Italian, a desire to be more Italian.

Now, four years later, I was the teacher, standing before a different small group of people, and this time I was speaking in Italian.My classmates are twelve Americans, who, like me, have a passion to learn this bella lingua. This night it was my turn to present, and I had chosen to speak about wine. Specifically, I wanted to explain to my class about the way the heat of the sun can make a wine sweet.I brought with me three bottles of white wine that I had bought in Italy. There was a paper placemat in front of each person with circles on it in which to place the different wine cups.There were cups for each different wine.A bit of parmagiano cheese and breadsticks in the center of the table.All was like the wine tastings that I had attended in Italy.To be very authentic I had even brought with me an Italian named Giuseppe, who did duty as my sommelier that evening. I was very serious and official. Most importantly, I was speaking in Italian.

First we poured and tasted a Mueller Thurgau from Trentino in Northern Italy."Questo vino," ho detto, "e' intenso, persistente, aromatico, con sentori di banana e di pesca." This wine is intense, persistent, aromatic, with aromas of banana and peaches. It is a dry wine, as it grows in the North where the sun is not so strong, and where the evening temperatures fall lower.It was followed by a Vermentino from Sicilia.More sweet, because there on Sicily the sun evaporates most of the water inside of the grape, leaving only sweet sugars.The class asked me questions. I answered as best as I could, in Italian.

Lastly, we tasted a Passito from Pantelleria, a small island southwest of Sicily and very close to Africa.Here, in the African heat, all of the water within the grape is evaporated, leaving a wine so sweet, it is only appropriate as a dessert.It goes well with something a bit more dry, and so for this I had brought some almond biscotti. I demonstrated how Italians dip these into the Passito for a second before eating, and we all tried.For some of my classmates this was the first time they had tried such a combination. Did it put into their minds the thought of the hot sun of Pantelleria?I’m not sure, but from their smiles I think it pleased them…

After my presentation there was time to finish the bottles and the biscotti.I let the others do the major part of the talking now. We spoke about their experiences with wine in Italy. I listened to the conversation, relaxed, sipped my wine. I hoped that I’d given them a little taste, both literally and figuratively, of my experience. I felt content, complete, as if a circle had been closed.It’s taken me four years to redeem myself for my 'tavola' error.Maybe I have made some progress, and I’ve certainly found much joy along the way.But by no means is this journey over. Sure, now I know my merlots from my malbecs, and that ice wine is not something that you keep in the freezer, and yet in so many ways I've just started. You want to know the most important thing that I have learned though? It is this… As it is for the wine so it can be for life.It takes solo due cose molto simplici, only two things very simple, desire and determination, to make everything else possible, and to make your life into a thing very straordinario, extraordinary, indeed.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Giampiero is an artist. He creates art, such as beautiful, dreamy prints of old postcards superimposed with mysterious messages. He sells art, in Wunder Kammer, his shop on Isola Bella. There, in a 500-year old building that long-ago housed craftsmen and workmen, he sells items that recreate their old techniques. And he organizes art shows. This is what he was working on when I met him. He had transformed an old boathouse into a small gallery showcasing the work of a few specially chosen modern artists. The walls and floor of the boathouse are barren concrete; the ceiling is made of old wooden beams to which a few modern lights have been attached. There is a distinct lack of color. It is as if to be in a black and white photograph. In the center of the floor is one item. It is a ruin of a small wooden rowboat. It rests askew on some giant wooden blocks that serve as a stand for it, but it still gives the impression of having been washed up to that very spot eons ago by a long-receded wave and having remained undisturbed there ever since. Its tones are so close to that of the concrete surrounding it that it seems almost camouflaged. The peripheral walls of the building hold various works between the concrete structural supports. Each piece is unique and thought-provoking, yet it is the total space, viewed as a whole, that is more powerful than any one individual piece.

I have a favorite work. It spoke to me, affected me, and I cannot stop thinking of it. It is a photographic portrait of Giampiero himself, large like the size of a poster. In the black and white photo the artist is seated in a chair with his hands folded in his lap. He gazes directly at the camera, at me, when I viewed the portrait. There are a few words scribbled across the photo, as if he had taken a marker and written them himself. They say, “Non ho Avuto il Tempo;” I haven’t had the time.

The time for what? The mystery makes me crazy. Directly in front of the portrait, maybe four meters away, is a bust of a man on a pedestal. They look at each other, locked in some sort of eternal staring contest. I think the bust-man has asked Giampiero whether or not he has done something, but Giampiero defiantly, yet calmly, tells him he hasn’t had the time.

Non ho avuto il tempo. I think on this often. Do I have the time? Would I like to say that I haven’t had the time? I’d like to say that I haven’t had the time to be angry, to have regrets, to have fear. I don’t want to have the time to dwell on old grudges, to think negative thoughts, or to worry too much about what others may think. These thoughts will keep me just as stuck in one place as that rowboat is, gathering dust, as it does.

But mostly, I don’t want to have to say that I haven’t had the time. Not if it means that I haven’t had the time to do the things that make me happy, or to make someone else happy. Not if it means I’ve been too busy to reach for my dreams, or to learn, to laugh, to take chances, to love, to actually live. Because, in reality, there is so little time. And I don’t intend to waste not even one precious moment of it.

About Me

Life is strange... How else can you explain how a bottle of red table wine could set into motion a series of wonderful events that have brought me here. Read my stories, in English or Italian, as you wish, come vuoi, and enjoy them. Grazie.